Collective Ekoes / Chapter 03 (Text)

The dread that had filled her gut boiled to hot anger. Abel wasn’t in danger. He was trying to show her up. He'd turned a life-and-death situation into a pissing contest. 

Luckily, her faceplate was still dark. He wouldn’t get the satisfaction of seeing her fuming. She stared up at him for a long moment, and he just stared back, his grin growing more and more unbearable by the instant. She wanted to tear into him, curse him out for his recklessness and irresponsibility. But she knew that’s what he wanted. To see her crack. To make her look weak in front of her squad. 

She wasn’t about to participate in his petty nonsense. This was still an active incursion. There were protocols to follow.

Cass took long deep breaths as she assessed the room. She counted eight dead ekoes. All of them unarmed. It didn’t look like they’d even put up a fight. Abel had been very lucky. 

There were many eko factions, spread all through the Assembly, each with their own beliefs and measures. Some were just as fervent in their ideology as Abel, and believed sapient liberation worth killing for.  

But judging by the neat formal jackets and long dresses, now bloody and torn, these ekoes were likely Auroran missionaries. They were pacifists, and considered death while attempting to shepherd lost souls from their impermanent bodies a noble sacrifice—a sacrifice made easier by the personality back-ups stored safely with their flotilla. If they didn’t return, someone would just activate a new copy, like nothing had happened. They’d resume their lives, only missing the time they’d lost during their mission. 

Sure, they were willing to die for their cause, but for ekoes, death was relative. A minor inconvenience. 

And here Abel was, acting like the big hero. But the enemies he’d slaughtered weren’t even the dangerous kind. Not that he’d ever admit the difference. 

She turned to face her squad. “Second and Third teams,” she said out loud, more for Able’s benefit than the team’s, “the ekoes have an encampment nearby. Potentially a ship. Find and secure it. Berthold. Haokip. I want another sweep on the building, then secure the town and hold the LZ until the transport shuttle arrives. Ackles, you’ll process the citizens with me.”

The troopers acknowledged their orders and marched off. 

“We’ve already cleared the area,” Abel called after her team, showing off. “You’re welcome.” The men on the stage around him chuckled. 

She would never have let anyone else get away with this disrespect, not that anyone else would ever dare try. They were Strazhi, the most feared warriors in the Collective. Something Abel could never be. And as much as she disliked throwing it in his face, he was asking for it. Instead of mellowing him out, his promotion had only inflated his ego.

Cass spun on him and retracted her helmet. Now that her team wasn’t around, she didn’t have to be so guarded. But she kept her voice in check. Ackles was still documenting everything. 

“What the hell do you think you’re doing, civilian?” she asked, emphasizing the word. Abel might be the leader of the local militia, but that didn’t mean much anywhere but locally.    

“Your job,” Abel snarked back. 

Cass went straight for the kill. “My job requires discipline. Perhaps that's why you weren’t invited to join.” She was right and she knew it. “You didn’t hear us land? You saw our feeds come online. Protocol requires you announce your presence.”

Abel smirked his most obnoxious smirk. “I should have, but where’s the fun in that?” 

Her temper rose in her throat. “People’s lives are at stake.”

“Yeah, ours. They shot at us first.” 

“They didn’t shoot at you. They don’t even have weapons.” 

“But one of the citizens did,” he said, a defiant tremor in his stare. “We put him down.” 

He nodded down at the line of handcuffed prisoners. Three of the dead seemed peaceful, like they had died in their sleep—which they basically had, as it looked as though the ekoes had already extracted their personalities before Abel and his men arrived—but the fourth had a giant bloody wound in his chest. A small caliber weapon lay near his feet. 

 That happened sometimes. There were certain citizens who thought the same way the ekoes did, and wanted to help free their “mentally imprisoned” fellow citizens by any means necessary. 

Though it was odd that there’d only be one.

“So, you decided to run in and kill everything that moved?” Cass said.

“Only the ekoes. The citizens are all still alive, aren’t they? Most of them, not that they deserve it. The traitors.” 

She scanned the line of sullen faces, passive behind their blindfolds, trying to read their intentions, to anticipate who might pose a threat. But they hadn’t said anything, just remained on their knees waiting for their fates to be decided. 

Whatever they were running from when they’d chosen to collaborate with ekoes to escape their bodies, they’d ended up worse off than when they started. A pile of em-caps were stacked on the stage. They’d been wearing them to hide their tags.  

“They’re still Collective citizens,” Cass said, arguing despite herself. She didn’t feel much sympathy for them either. “They still have rights.”

“They gave up those rights the moment they aligned with the bit-heads,” Abel shot back.

“That decision isn’t up to you,” Ackles reminded him. 

No, it was up to the local magistrate, who, in this case, happened to be Wilhelm Abel Cannon II, their father. And they both knew what his sentence would be. There was only one punishment for consorting with the enemy: a life sentence in the penal colony on the dark side of Narod. A life sentence, which, mercifully for most people, only tended to last a few months. 

Abel shrugged. “I've already called a wagon to come get them. It’ll be here any minute.” 

“Turn the wagon around. They're in Strazhi custody. We’re taking them to Ursa Station. General al-Jarrah has ordered all attempted defects brought to him.” 

Abel smirked and shook his head. “This is Perseverance. All due respect to the general, but he doesn’t have jurisdiction. They're just going to end up back here in front of the magistrate anyway. I wouldn’t want to keep Father waiting.”

Father shared Abel's intense hatred for ekoes, but, like Cass, Father also understood that rules and procedures were even more important. Without rules, they'd all fall to chaos. Like the Assembly.

“I'm sure the magistrate will insist on following the sector governor’s orders,” Cass said. And she knew Abel knew it too. 

He flashed his bright white teeth at her, and in a gentle voice said, “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you just pack your shit up, clear out, and let us work.” 

She’d learned long ago that unleashing her clenched fury would only serve his cause. Her brother was who he was. She couldn’t change that any more than he could. 

“Thank you for your service, Major,” she said, keeping her voice neutral. “You and your team are dismissed. Return to your vehicle. Someone will be by to take a statement and then you can be on your way.”

“Return to our vehicle?” Abel gawped. “No fucking chance. We’re staying right here until—”

A high-pitched electric hum filled the air as red lights began blinking in the dark corners of the room and under the stage. Adrenaline spiked Cass’ system like a high-voltage shock, and she instantly raised her helmet. 

The ekoes had wired the room with explosives. She should have ordered a thorough inspection before she sent the teams out, but Abel's prank had distracted her.   

She spun, looking for whoever had armed the bombs, but the drones tagged the hostile first: up on the balcony, a female civilian in heat-masking fatigues, wearing an em-cap and holding some kind of trigger device in her raised hand. The second conspirator, the one which Abel had been too busy setting up his little spectacle to bother finding. She must have gone to ground when the militia took out her companion, and waited until Berthold and Haokip had cleared the building to sneak back in.

“Any of you fuckers move,” she yelled, “and I blow us all to purgatory!”

Cass silently alerted Berthold and Haokip to the danger and ordered them to return to the audience chamber, but they were on the other side of town. It would take a few moments for them to get back. Ackles kept still next to her. 

By herself, the hostile posed no threat. She’d be dead before she heard the sound of the bullets that killed her. But it looked like a deadman's switch in her hand. If they shot her and she released it, the explosives would trigger. Even wearing their armor, they were in danger. The militia members and civilians would be vaporized. The only solution here was de-escalation.

Cass activated her external speaker. “I’m Lieutenant Cassandra Cannon of the Strazhi Mira. Disarm the trigger and I can promise you a fair trial.”

The woman flashed a sharp smile. "You’re all going to back off and let us finish our extraction,” she said. Her eyes flicked to the line of people on the stage. “We’re not hurting anyone.”

“Fuck that!” Abel shouted, a wild look in his eyes. “Kill her.”

His men raised their weapons to fire, and the woman flinched but remained standing, as if daring them to. 

Cass waved them down. “Nyet!” she yelled. “Hold!”  

“I won’t go to Narod,” the woman said, brandishing the detonator. “If I die, some of you are coming with me.”

Cass once again retracted her helmet, trying to connect with the woman up on the balcony. The detonator trembled in her hand. Her eyes were glassy with emotion. 

“I know you're scared,” Cass said, "but you're only making this worse for yourself."

“Just let us finish,” the woman said. “Please.” 

She glanced at the line of prisoners, then quickly back to Cass. She knew one of them. Probably someone with a terminal disease she was trying to help escape their body before it was too late. 

Cass couldn’t help but feel for the woman, as she obviously had her problems—especially if she felt converting was in any way a solution to them—but the future of humanity was at stake here. Cass was Strazhi, she couldn’t be weak. 

Though strength didn’t mean every solution had to come from the barrel of a weapon.

“Hand over the detonator,” she offered, talking like she would to a frightened animal, “and I’ll make sure the magistrate knows you surrendered willingly. I know him. Co-operation now could help with your sentence.” 

The woman’s face tightened. “I—can’t let him die,” she said, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Aw—fuck this,” Abel said. He pulled his pistol from the holster strapped to his thigh and pressed the barrel against the kneeling civilian closest to him. The man whimpered and scrunched his face under the blindfold. “Drop it or I kill him. Even if this isn't who you're boo-hooing about, we’ll find him eventually.”

“Wait—” the woman cried, holding the detonator higher.

Abel had gone too far. This would only make things worse. “Major Cannon!" Cass barked at him, raising her voice. "Stand down. Now.”

Abel narrowed his eyes at her. “Stay the fuck out of this,” he warned, as if he had any authority here. “She’s not an eko. This isn’t your concern.”

It was an incursion, and until the site was cleared, the Strazhi were in charge. But there was no point in arguing. Abel had always operated on his own personal set of truths. Facts had nothing to do with it.

What was she supposed to do? Training hadn’t prepared her for this. There were no drills to create the muscle memory for how to respond when your unhinged brother went rogue at an incursion site.

“Abel, you’re making this worse,” she said, trying to get through to him.   

“You have until three,” Abel said to the woman, disregarding Cass completely. “One—”

He pulled the trigger. 

The man’s head exploded over the woman kneeling next to him. She recoiled in horror, whimpering in fear. The woman on the balcony screamed in frustration, and Cass raised her helmet, but the explosions didn’t come. She thought her armor would probably protect her, but there were enough blinking lights surrounding her she didn’t want to find out. 

Ackles raised his gun arm at Abel. “You are under arrest for the murder of a Collective citizen,” he said. “Drop your weapon.”

Cass tightened her jaw. Technically, Ackles was right, but this wasn't the time. 

Abel just laughed as his team, who had been relatively relaxed up until now, swung their mag-rifles up at her and Ackles. They were big weapons, meant to take out the thick armored hides of the native gronto that grazed in the southern grasslands. A half dozen unloading on a single target would be enough to threaten even Strazhi armor.   

Cass didn’t know what to do. At this point, Abel and his men were a bigger threat than the woman with the detonator.

“Orders, Lieutenant?” Ackles said. "I understand this is family, but we have a clear breach of peace." He wanted permission to engage. And by all rights, if it had been anyone but Abel, she would have given it. But this was her brother.  

Abel looked up at the balcony, then stepped over the cowering woman at his feet to the next male in line. 

“One,” Abel said.

“Abel, stop,” Cass cried out. The weight of her armor pressed around her, and for the first time, she found it suffocating. A parasite hooked directly into her head, feeding off her. She choked, couldn’t breathe. Abel was about to get himself killed and there was nothing she could do.

Berthold and Haokip were cresting the front steps of the building. They’d arrive any second, and then the power dynamic would shift. Maybe then Abel would come to his senses.

“Two,” Abel said, eyebrow raised, taunting her. 

Ackles shot him.   

Burst fire. Straight through his abdomen.

Abel gasped and his eyes went wide, like he’d just remembered something important. He twisted and missed shooting the woman he’d been threatening when his finger twitched on the trigger.

Cass' thoughts went blank as years of military conditioning and sibling animosity broke down in despair for her brother’s life. She leapt at the stage, moving by instinct, launching up toward the high ceiling just as the militia opened up on Ackles. Mag-bolts struck his armor with hollow, shattering thuds, and drove him to his knees.

“Lieutenant!” he yelled as he returned fire, shredding one of Abel’s men, expecting her to back him up. 

Instead, she landed on the stage, scooped Abel into her arms, and put her back between her brother and the fast-moving metal Berthold and Haokip began throwing from the other side of the hall.

Ackles’ heath monitor pinged in her vision. One of the mag-bolts must have hit a joint and cracked into him. He was still alive, but maybe not for long. 

One of the militia fell, immediately followed by another, and the others seemed to be giving up, throwing down their weapons. The fight was almost over, but the woman was still on the balcony—

“Cassie,” Abel groaned. “I think I’m hurt…” He coughed, and blood bubbled on his lips. 

She had to do something. She couldn’t let her brother die. She’d never be able to face Father again.

“I’ve got you,” she said as she lifted him, everything else forgotten, then lunged through the back of the stage and out toward the building’s rear exit. 

Away from the bullets. Away from the danger. 

“Lieutenant, where are you—?" Berthold started, but his words were cut off by the explosion that tore through the hall behind her.

Berthold and Ackles’ vitals went yellow. Haokip’s went red. 

She kept running, out of the building and through the overgrown streets, while her team called for help behind her.